This week’s release schedule had more than its share of shake-ups, as One Republic’s Native shifted to next week, and 50 Cent’s Street King Immortal slouches its way to 2013. With Taylor Swift’s Red set for a third consecutive week atop the charts, does a surprise hit rest among the remaining 2012 releases?

Green Day had high hopes for Dos!, the second release of their planned three-album punch, but with a lead singer in rehab, it’s tough promoting new material. Christina Aguilera earned plenty of press for Lotus, thanks to her role judging The Voice, but the album’s songs aren’t building much buzz. OneDirection will get the teen girls hopping thanks to 2012’s boy-band resurgence, but the biggest battle this week has the Beatles and the Rolling Stones challenging each other for sales supremacy while Soundgarden releases its first album of fresh material since 1996.

With next week’s release window still swinging wide open, nothing’s a safe bet save for the likelihood that Adele’s 21, issued last year, stands to be this year’s most successful album by a wide margin.

Aaron Lewis’s second solo album fully transitions the former Staind front-man from by-the-numbers alt-rock to straightforward radio country. “Red White and Blue” aims for the Veterans Day crowd and hits the mark, though nothing quite has the lyrical punch of “Country Boy” off his debut Town Line.

Whether you love or hate her overwrought “gangster Nancy Sinatra” pose, Paradise adds depth to Del Rey’s much maligned debut Born to Die, showcasing an artist still searching for her real hook. With months separating these new songs from January’s hype, they stand successfully on their own, boding well for her second wind.

Chris Cornell and Soundgarden haven’t put out fresh material since 1996, yet King Animal and the lead single “Been Away Too Long” prove you can pick up right where you left off. Forget ‘90s nostalgia – Soundgarden’s making great alternative music in the here and now.

For fans of both the Beatles and vinyl in general, there’s no better holiday gift than this newly reissued collection. Reproduced in 180-gram audiophile-grade vinyl, this collection includes all 14 of the Beatles’ original studio albums, plus an elegant 252-page hardcover book showcasing a wealth of photographs spanning the band’s entire career. As a bonus, this is the first time the band’s four earliest albums will receive North American stereo vinyl treatment.

While this week’s release slate gears up for Black Friday with heavy hitters, a number of albums from the last month still merit consideration as last-minute stocking-stuffers, including new pop-punk from All Time Low and a rarities collection from the best Athens, Georgia band not called R.E.M.

This generation seems to be having trouble finding a unique voice. Listened to the clips, have Lana’s new album. There’s nothing there.

That will happen when the drummer, guitarist and bass player are treated like a GarageBand program. What I’m hearing aside from that, are tired arrangements I’ve heard a zillion times, like this Soundgarden clip. Listen to Jeff Beck, Tal Wilkenfeld and Vinnie Colaiuta at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club. That’s music. Whatever you think of it, it’s a happening with the entire band fully engaged and they don’t care if you like it or not – there is no pandering.

Again, whether you like them or not, when you listen to Ram by Paul McCartney or the Layla album or The Who, among many, many others, you hear unique expressions whose artistic energy, integrity and enthusiasm is simply hard to match for the current generation.

You can screw up your faces and sweat all you want, when it’s not real it’s not real.

The gamechanger of course is that young people prefer music aimed at their generation, no matter how bad it is compared to what came before. I cannot make that leap. You see the same thing in film and literature today. We need new things – that’s the nature of pop art. It’s consumed and we move on to the next, no matter what it is, choosing the best, even when it’s the worst relative to what came before.

In truth, we’ve gone back to the 3 min. hit record like in the early ’60s, but without the songwriting, producing and arranging talent. The new, current and hep generation are bigger rednecks than the mythical conformist rednecks were.